Professor Michael McDonald has estimated turnout at 39.7% at the election this week. This means 39.7% of the potential electorate voted (including registered voters as well as those who could have registered).
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Paul Trujillo, Libertarian County Commissioner in Valencia County, district 3, was defeated for re-election, although he outpolled his Republican opponent. The vote was Democratic 1,781 (47.1%), Libertarian 1,006 (26.6%), Republican 994 (26.3%).
New Mexico is one of the fourteen states that uses a straight-ticket device, so that voters frequently vote for every partisan office on the ballot without even being aware of which offices they are voting for, or who is running.
It is still true that no party other than the Democratic and Republican Parties has ever won a partisan election in New Mexico. Minor parties were traditionally very weak in New Mexico in the past. Greens were strong in the 1990’s, and elected several non-partisan candidates, but never won a partisan race.
On November 7, California voters rejected an initiative that would have imposed discrimination against small qualified parties into the election law. The “Clean Elections” initiative, unlike similar initatives that passed years ago in Maine, Massachusetts and Arizona, would have provided that Democratic and Republican nominees automatically get substantially more public funding than anyone else. This, despite the fact that all candidates seeking public funding would have been subject to the same burden of getting a specified number of voters to give them $5 contributions. The initiative lost 74%-26%.
On November 7, Rhode Island voters voted to let ex-felons who are on probation and parole become registered voters.
As noted some time ago, the Ohio Libertarian Party won a huge victory in the 6th circuit in September 2006; that court struck down the state’s ballot access law for new parties. Ohio had a Republican Attorney General and a Republican Secretary of State at the time. They both indicated they planned to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal. However, Democrats won the Ohio races for Secretary of State and Attorney General on November 7, so perhaps the state will take a fresh look at whether it wishes to ask for U.S. Supreme Court involvement.